


Therefore

by UnredBlood



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, Emotional Manipulation, Hate to Love, Homosexuality, Love, Love Triangles, Love/Hate, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Mind Manipulation, Near Future, Police, Science Fiction, Technology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnredBlood/pseuds/UnredBlood
Summary: Few expected that the great pharmaceutical tycoon, Alastair O'Sullivan, would be found dead in his home, murdered by a bullet to the head. Inspector Howard Harrison, on the other hand, was even less expecting to find the first perfect android ever created in the old man's residence.His name is Isaac.Eternal youth, beauty, life, limitless intelligence and, above all, blind obedience. When Howard decides to take him under his wing and welcome him into his dysfunctional family, his son Sean, an anti-technology activist, is determined to get rid of this human-looking monster.





	1. Raindrops

February 4, 2054 - 11:48 pm  
North of San Francisco, California  
53°F, rainfall 47%, humidity 61%, wind 19 mph.

 

The wheel of the car passed through a puddle, throwing a wave of rainwater on the driveway. The man leaned slightly forward, his eyes fixed on the wide open front door of the house, blocked by two yellow holographic bands only pierced by four letters. SFPD. The little computer geniuses who had seen fit to replace the good old ribbons that the police had been using for decades must have found it less difficult to settle for initials rather than pierce their pretty golden light of ‘San Francisco Police Department, do not cross’. Less aesthetic too, probably.

"You have arrived at your destination," said a female voice through the car's speakers.

"Yeah, I could have guessed it," muttered the man as the door on his left slowly opened, the smell of rain and fresh air welcoming him outside.

The soles of his boots plunged into a large puddle as soon as he got out of the vehicle, tearing off him a smothered swear when the bottom of his soaked pants clung unpleasantly against his skin. Putting his hands in the pockets of his navy blue jacket with a steel star on the chest, he went around the car as he watched it close the door, turn off its dazzling headlights and lock itself as if, once its mission was accomplished, it fell asleep peacefully. The wonders of technology, he thought as he scanned the surroundings with a weary glance. There were two others cars, well parked around the front steps of the house, whose red and blue lights swirled in the darkness, illuminating the bricks of the facade and casting the shadows of the garden sculptures on the steps of the stairs. It was the first time he had set foot in one of the splendid houses nestled on one of the hills overlooking San Francisco. Generally, the missions he was given were more likely to take place in neighbourhoods where a non-uniformed person rarely wanted to spend the night.

"A cig, Inspector?"

The man took his eyes off the mullioned windows when he saw a young policeman cross the alleyway holding a pack of cigarettes between his fingers. He refused his offer with a shake of his head.

"I'm glad you came. I know you weren't on duty tonight, but…"

"It doesn't matter, Marty. Anyway, Sean's not home tonight, so it's not like anyone's gonna miss me."

Marty nodded slowly, pretending to be looking at a sculpture next to the steps of the porch. It was an angel, a woman, naked, curled up, whose empty eyes timidly glanced over her wide wings. The rich people really had strange tastes.  
But it was Marty that Inspector Harrison was watching. He was a good guy, Marty, and even Howard knew how difficult it could be to be respected as a black cop, especially with that jerk Chief Johnson who seemed to take a wicked pleasure in sending his colored subordinates to do the dirty work. Despite everything, Marty never complained, and in six years he had never given Johnson a single reason to write a line in his disciplinary file. Integrity was all Howard Harrison expected from his colleagues. The colour of their skin or the neighbourhood in which they had grown up was the least of his worries.

"How is it coming along?" he asked, looking back at the front door.

"It's not pretty to see. Or to smell, for that matter. The coroner should be here soon, but by the smell, I bet that poor old man's been here for a month."

Howard shrugged while walking toward the door, Marty on his heels. He climbed the steps of the porch and the two men stopped for a moment, inhaling a good breath of fresh air before crossing the holographic bands that blocked the entrance. Marty hadn't exaggerated: the smell was just awful. If he had not had a good twenty years of unpleasant experiences, Howard would have have an uncontrollable retching, but he just let go of a growl of disgust while the other police officers in the living room greeted him with a nod.  
The floor creaked under his weight as he walked through the room to the large fireplace in front of which was a large black leather armchair. It looked incredibly comfortable, much more than the cheap couch the inspector had in his own apartment. Apparently, the corpse that was sitted there shared his opinion.

"Well, would you look at you...," Harrison whispered as he pulled the little flashlight from his belt to inspect the gaping hole that adorned the exact middle of his forehead.

The old man stared at the ceiling of his glassy eyes, his mouth wide open and his neck against the leather of the chair. Traces of dry blood flowed from the wound, passing between his two eyebrows composed of a handful of white hairs and splitting on either side of his nose. A few drops had soiled his silk bathrobe. A crime in itself, given the price of it.

"The gun between his eyes was probably the last thing he saw," Marty said sadly.

Harrison looked at him briefly as he passed the light through the old man's bare feet, following the clots of blood that had dried on the carpet, straight towards the chimney filled with greyish ashes.

"No. He was shot from behind. The bullet went through his skull. I think someone lifted his head up afterwards."

"Why would someone do that?"

"I don't know… I don't know. Anyway, the old man died instantly. Did we find the gun?"

"No. And there's no sign of forced entry or theft. The neighbours saw nothing, heard nothing, but even before his death, no one had seen him leave his property for almost ten years. It was the nurse who came for his monthly check-up who found the body and immediately called us."

"What about his family?"

"He was a widower. Don't you remember? He had stated on television that he was withdrawing from public life after his wife's death and leaving his affairs to his last son, Desmond."

Howard made an annoyed face.

"The chronicles of the O’Sullivan family have never fascinated me."

"But still...," Marty tried.

"... it’s the most influential family on the West Coast, I know. Any news of his son?"

"We called him, he said that he’s on a business trip to Paris and that he can’t come home right now."

The inspector looked up at Marty and stared at him for long seconds, as if he expected his young colleague to read his mind, but finally straightened up silently, looking at the paintings on the walls. Biblical scenes, for the most part. He didn't know much about religion, but he still had some vague memories of the catechism classes that his parents had forced him to take throughout his childhood. The Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. Cain and Abel. The flashlight then turned to the third and last panel.

"Inspector?"

Howard frowned, his eyes running through the canvas. All these scenes had a dark side, almost resigned to pain, anger, betrayal... But this one was something else. Something worse. It wasn't from Genesis this time. It was mythological. The features were more feverish, the colours saturated, the shapes more pronounced. It was… Cronos eating his own children.

"Inspector, are you okay?"

"What? Oh... Yes, I'm fine. I was just thinking about…"

Marty raised an eyebrow, looking at him when he turned around.

"... about his son. He learned that his father has been found dead, but he prefers to stay in France. How nice of him."

Howard had a slight smile as he walked through the living room towards the stairs.

"Make kids," he muttered for himself, "Has anyone checked the first floor yet?"

Marty silently shook his head before turning back to old O'Sullivan's body. There was no point in insisting on O'Sullivan's son: no one knew anything about the private lives of these people. And if the police had trouble gathering information, or even daring to say their name, it was proof that they had raised so much money that it now allowed them to keep undesirables from getting too close to their little secrets. A little extra privilege.  
Howard looked down and felt his foot slipping on the floor, as if the rains of the last week had been so heavy that puddles had even appeared in the living room. Puddles made of black, slightly oily rainwater. Two or three sole marks left the puddle and crossed the living room before fading away.

"It's my fault, Inspector," said another policeman, leaning against a wall in the room, "It was dark when we came in, I’m sorry I stepped in it."

Harrison glanced at him, but instead of answering, he dipped two fingers in the black liquid and rubbed them for a moment, observing the material against his skin before carrying it to his nostrils.

"Coolant," he whispered, wiping his fingers on his pants.

The inspector stood up slowly, stepping over the puddle, the flashlight illuminating the floor in search of other black traces. There was no reason for old O'Sullivan to have fun transporting such a product through his apartments. In fact, there was no reason why he should even have any at home, since he hadn't had a car for a good decade. What is the point of keeping a vehicle, and one of the oils necessary for its maintenance, when you no longer go out of your garden?  
He climbed one by one the steps leading to the first floor, marking a short pause each time a black trace, however discreet it may have been, caught his attention. When he reached the first floor, he watched each end of the corridor with the white light, finding only the right door still closed. On the left was the bathroom. His attention then turned to the heavy varnished wooden door facing him. When he activated the handle, it opened in a sinister squeak, discovering a room plunged into darkness, eaten away by humidity, and occupied by a much more invasive dust than the ground floor rooms. Spiderwebs were nestled in every corner, connecting libraries together as their tiny owners ran away from the light on the cracked ceiling.

"Damn," said Howard, looking at the covers of the books on the shelves. "I haven't seen one like this since the late 2020s."

He slowly walked around the desk in the centre of the room. The drawers, ripped open, emptied, seemed frozen in time, also covered with a thick layer of grey dust. There was indeed a small frame turned against the surface of the furniture, but....  
Inspector Harrison brought the light back on the frame as he approached it. Just a second. It was most likely a photograph of O'Sullivan's wife or son, so he had not felt intrigued by this unimportant object at first, but a detail had almost escaped him. A detail that suddenly made this frame even more interesting than the old paper books that were cluttering the shelves.  
A very slight fingerprint, a black one, had dried on the edge of the frame.  
Howard approached his hand. This mark... Did it belong to the old man who had been shot without even seeing his murderer point his gun at him, or...  
Now used to the silent, his heart jumped when he heard a sudden noise, like a creaking floor, right behind him. His muscles tensed out of fear, Howard immediately turned around and pulled his gun from the belt of his uniform, both arms outstretched in front of him, pointing his flashlight over the barrel of his gun.

"Shit."

No one. Of course. Perhaps it was only one of his colleagues who had leaned against a slightly fragile piece of furniture in the living room. Nothing very alarming.  
Or maybe it wasn't that.  
There's no sign of forced entry or theft. Howard walked to the door and stopped in the hallway leading to the only door still closed. There were still these black marks, but this time there was no question of a simple fingerprint. It was as if someone had crawled on the ground.  
He knew him, he thought. He let him inside his home. And he was obviously not motivated by money. It was personal. A murder in all conscience: it was old O'Sullivan who had to die, for one reason or another.  
Howard walked though the hallway without making a sound, remaining as stoic as the statues in the garden as soon as the floor creaked under his weight. A few more steps, and he'd be right outside the door. The closer he was, the more the white glow of his flashlight highlighted the fingerprints clumsily left on the lower part of the wood, leading his gaze to the handle.  
The inspector looked back at his gun, while taking a deep breath. Three. Two. One.  
Concentrating all his strength into his leg, he violently kicked the door, breaking the lock by cracking the wood under the impact. It gave in, slamming against the wall and unveiling a large room cluttered with countless decorative knick-knacks and documents framed on the walls. Diplomas, press clippings about the affairs of good old Alistair O'Sullivan, his hold on the pharmaceutical industry, the dozens of private hospitals he opened on the West Coast in the 2030s, the influential personalities he had met…  
Howard pointed his gun at the stuffed deer in a corner of the room, near the large mullioned window overlooking the garden through which the blue and red lights of the police cars slid to illuminate the room. A bent leg, upright neck, his large brown eyes seemed to escort the inspector as he cautiously advanced through the room. Without even taking the risk of blinking, Howard went around the bed, passing light over every inch of the perfectly tucked-in sheets in search of other black traces. Nothing. Nothing at all.  
With a deep sigh, mixing both disappointment and relief, Howard lowered his gun while staring at the deer's big eyes as if he was looking for some form of support. It was incredibly beautiful. Its brown fur, smooth and shiny, underlined the graceful shape of its body. It had something... inexplicably bewitching. So, without really knowing the reason himself, Howard finished crossing the room to it, nestled behind the wide bed, as if frightened by the presence of this perfect stranger on his territory, by this unknown face that was slowly approaching him…  
But he stopped.  
Howard felt his heart suddenly rise up his throat, trapping the air in his lungs. He did not even have the presence of mind to straighten up the weapon he was holding in his hands, or even the simple idea of calling his colleagues. He simply stood there, his eyes wide opens, the furious beats of his heart resonating throughout his whole body.

"Oh fuck..."

The glow of his flashlight stubbornly remained on a young man's pale face, refusing to detach itself from his thin, slightly bluish, half-open lips, his deep brown, glassy eyes, framed by long black eyelashes, or his dark, slightly wavy hair resting against the cold floor.

"Oh fuck," he repeated, trying to look at his whole body, slowly squatting beside him.

The young man was lying on his stomach, his legs bent, one arm trapped under his belly and the other resting miserably against the floor, as if his eyes were still hanging on his hand. Shit, he couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. When he died at the age of seventy-eight, he doubted that Alistair O'Sullivan had such a young son, one that the press would never have talked about. Anyway, from the clothes he was wearing, he seemed closer to a servant than a rich heir. Then what? A collateral victim? Possible.  
Howard putted his fingers on the boy's neck, pressing his soft, icy skin in search of the tiniest, weakest pulse. Of course, if his theory was correct and he had been killed at the same time as old O'Sullivan, that did not explain why, unlike the first victim, he was still in a wonderful state of preservation. It didn't even give off that infamous smell of putrefaction.  
The inspector shook his head, resigned to the fact that no heartbeat would grab his fingers. It was not the first time he had faced such a young victim, but he never managed to examine these bodies with the same detachment he felt towards the forties, fifties or anyone who had had the chance to experience life before falling into the final chasm.

"Poor boy...," he sighed before removing his fingers from his throat.

Harrison stood up and turned away, backing up to the door to warn his colleagues of the presence of a second body, when a squeak sounds behind him. A rubbing on the floor, the wood boards cracking. Howard turned around, his flashlight raised, his arm pressed against his chest. The light went through the sheets of the bed, the stare of the stuffed deer, then rushed to the ground.  
Howard felt a scream get stuck in his throat, unable to get out of it as if a knot was preventing his voice and breath from leaving his body. A wave of terror whipped his nerves and raised the pores of his skin while drops of cold sweat ran across his forehead and down his spine. He could not see his reflection anywhere, but he was certain that the colors had fled his face, making him as pale as the young man he had just found.  
Now, his cheek no longer rested against the floor, his glassy eyes no longer stared forever at his open fist. As soon as the blinding glow of the flashlight stuck to his face again, the young man's muscles seemed to have suddenly contracted, trying to straighten up with a sudden movement, but his weak limbs had not been able to support his weight.

"Goddamn it," Howard finally shouted as a wave of burning blood invaded his arms and legs, screaming at him to grab his gun.

The boy's back clumsily hit the bedside table, knocking over the little lamp that was there and falling into the deer's legs. One of his hands grabbed the bed sheets while the other scratched the floor in search of a support point, or perhaps the slightest object that could serve as a weapon or shield.

"Don't move! Don't fucking move!" The inspector shouted, the barrel of his gun pointed on the boy's forehead.

What the hell was that? What the hell just happened? A ghost? He was absolutely certain that he had not felt any heartbeat! It was impossible, purely and simply impossible.

"Inspector!"

Marty rushed into the room, three cops on his heels, their guns in hand. The policeman stopped, his black eyes wide open, passing from Howard to the young man curled up on the floor, against the bedside table.

"Who the hell is..."

"He was dead! He was fucking dead!"

"Wha..."

Harrison took his eyes off his stunned colleagues, turning his attention back to the boy's face. His head moved from one point to another in the room, following the voices he heard around him, his eyes half-closed, wrinkled, his bluish lips pinched. With his legs bent against his chest, Howard could not help but look up at the deer beside him. His body was as inert as his, with the exception of this feverish head movement.

"Inspect..."

Marty's voice died in his throat when the boy suddenly collapsed to the ground like a disjointed doll, his head falling on his shoulder.  
A heavy silence fell on the room. Howard kept his gun on him, still shaking. What was that? That strange phenomenon of chickens whose heads would have been cut off and whose bodies kept moving? Some kind of electrical impulse, a last breath of life?  
To his left, he heard Marty's whispers, asking a thousand and one questions without Howard even being able to formulate a single answer. He was dead. This boy was dead.

"Take him away," he whispered, carrying his shaking hand to his sweaty forehead.

"But..."

"I said, take him away!"

He was dead. But he had looked at him.


	2. Facade

February 5, 2054 - 10:21 am  
Police Station, West of San Francisco, California  
50°F, rainfall 23%, humidity 34%, wind 26 mph.

 

It was white. Everything was white. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls too. No windows. No face. This luminosity, this room had something familiar, reassuring.  
However, there was no furniture in this cube. There was nothing except a bench nailed to the back wall, covered with a thin layer of dust and a few yellowish traces that he preferred not to identify. He had never seen such an empty room before, but the walls were strangely decorated. It was certainly a bit more rustic than what he was used to seeing, but it had the merit of giving a touch of life to the whole room. ‘Fuck you’, ‘you're going to pay for this’, ‘I didn't do anything wrong’, and a series of numbers that didn't make any sense, followed by the name ‘Stacy.’ Some of these words were engraved in the stone, drawn with a sharp object, others had been marked with a pen. His finger retraced the curves of the five letters of the female name. He didn't know any Stacy.

"He’s right here."

Guided by the voice, the young man turned his head towards the one and only transparent wall of the cube. The only exit, too. With these three faces behind the glass wall, and theirs six eyes on him, he suddenly seemed to understand where he was. A zoo. And this room was his enclosure: the smell alone was enough to confirm his theory. Maybe the numbers before the first name ‘Stacy’ on the wall was the serial number of the previous attraction.

"So it’s him, the murdered victim Howard brought back from the dead?"

Two men and a woman. A woman. Maybe it was Stacy. Maybe he would leave his enclosure too and visit the zoo.

"I thought he'd stopped drinking since his wife left."

"He did! I've never seen him drank anything but black coffee."

Ah. This voice, he recognized it. His head turned to the wall as his eyelids closed, imprisoning him to the darkness.  
It was dark. Then, there had been a white flash, a blinding eye stuck on him, an immaculate halo on his skin, his hair, his body. This thing corresponded to the idea that humans seemed to have of ‘death’. A light at the end of a long tunnel. He had done some research on this, the first time Alistair had said this word in his presence. He had found no indication of what he could offer him to help him go through what he called ‘the last journey’.  
Two fingers had slipped into the hollow of his neck. The skin was dry, slightly warm. As they palpated his throat, he had heard a sound... A voice. A human voice. How long has it been since the last time he had heard words? Words. He had not understood them, but suddenly everything seemed very clear to him: the slow breathing, the regular heartbeats, the smell of wet earth and rainwater, the humidity. So he had to move, to detach himself from that hard and uncomfortable thing on which he was lying. A wave of energy passed through his limbs, an electric impulse so powerful that he shuddered to his toes.

"Ghjbscn it!"

This scream was so loud it leaved a shrill whistle in his ears. That voice... He didn't recognize it. What did he say? Was he talking to him? God, his eyesight was so... imprecise. The flashes of light exploded in a hundred, a thousand vertical lines clumsily cutting out a man's silhouette. His face. He had to see his face.

"Dsd’t mfce! Dsd’t fkuycjg mfce!"

"Idsbuiqjbr!"

That voice. It was him, this anonymous face who was watching him behind the window of the white cube. The second man. He was there, followed by three shadows. This impulse running through his body could not support his weight. It's been too long. That was it: he needed more time. More time to regain his strength, more time for his eardrums to be able to grasp all the sounds coming out of their mouths, more time for him to understand their meaning, more time...  
But he wanted to see the face of this man who smelled like rainwater.  
An unpleasant tingling ran through his neck. Heat... it was burning. The lines, the colours that rushed before his eyes blurred. And then, a fraction of a second before he sank into unconsciousness again, he saw two greyish eyes on him.  
He opened his eyes again. He was facing the white wall, facing ‘Stacy’ and her serial number. He turned his head back towards the window, where the eyes of the three people had left him, escorting a fourth figure who had suddenly invited itself into their small group. The newcomer was a tall man with hair so blond that it seemed as white as the walls of his enclosure. A deep wrinkle passed between his frowned eyebrows and purplish shadows highlighted his brown, cold, impenetrable eyes. Hm. He reminded him of that old documentary he had found about the packs of wild animals that still existed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It didn't matter which member of the herd had caught the prey: it was the leader who was entitled to the first bite. 

"Take him to the interrogation room."

Humans, in the end, were sometimes not as evolved as they seemed to think.

 

***

 

"So, what do we know about our new friend?"

The folder slammed on the desk, so light that it did not even shake the surface of the cup of black coffee. Marty vaguely shrugged towards Howard as he sat down in one of the chairs beside him, looking at Chief Johnson, who was leaning against the wall of the observation room. Seeing the dark bags under his eyes, it was hard to tell which one of them had spent the night at a crime scene. Although, if he was as pleasant with his wife as with his colleagues, his beautiful apartment would soon become one.

"What do we know? I’m afraid the answer is : nothing at all, Inspector Harrison," sighed Marty. "He hasn't said a word since he woke up, according to the people who were on duty last night. We spent the morning going through the missing persons reports from all over California, but he doesn't match any of them. I also personally checked the O'Sullivan family's birth certificates, but the old man apparently didn’t have a younger child than Desmond."

"The undead better have spent that time inventing a very good alibi," Johnson pointed out, looking towards the one-way window overlooking the interrogation room. "If he can't explain what the hell he was doing with a dead body, I'll send him to jail in no time."

Howard and Marty wearily glanced at each other before the inspector's eyes turned back to the boy. In his 20-year career, he had seen hundreds of people sitting in that chair, their fingertips nervously tapping the table and their eyes looking at each of the cameras in every corner of the rectangular room. No one, on the other hand, had ever behaved in the same way as him: with his back impeccably straight, his knees and his ankles glued to each other, he had simply joined his hands on the table, stubbornly staring at the wall that was facing him. Howard couldn't even see his chest rise under his breath. He had to be incredibly calm not to feel out of breath under the weight of apprehension, but in any case, this detail was not displeasing to him: Howard would have been quickly annoyed to have to spend hours questioning someone who was blowing like an ox between each word.

"Okay. I’ll go first," he said, tapping Marty on the shoulder before going through the door.

 

From the moment Howard walked through the doorway, the boy's brown eyes finally left the wall and immediately looked straight into his owns. It was strange to see him like that, so... so conscious. Aside from his paleness, he looked so alive that it really seemed ridiculous that Howard confused him with a corpse. A few strands of his slightly wavy hair fell on his forehead, but he was nevertheless able to see one of his eyebrows being shaken by a slight nervous spasm. His eyes followed Howard to the empty chair on the other side of the table, never letting his eyelids interrupt his observation for a single blink. He had a fascinating beauty, and even Howard was forced to acknowledge it, despite his reluctance to admit the qualities of other men without feeling bitter jealousy. But there was something quite contradictory about his charm. His deep gaze, his smooth white skin, his chiseled jawline, his thin lips of a discreet pink and those brown curls, everything about him radiated an elegant, attractive softness; but there was also that shadow, like an invisible mask, that suffocated his wiles under the icy indifference with which he observed the world around him.

"What's your name?," Howard asked, resting his back against the chair, suddenly feeling the need to keep a respectable distance between them.

The boy almost imperceptibly tilted his head to the right at this question, slightly squinting. Howard suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that he was once again under the inquisitive eye of that dumb psychologist he was seeing once a week. When the young man finally opened his mouth, he almost expected to hear his voice say that the session was over and that he owed him seventy dollars.

"My name is Isaac."

But he didn't have the hoarse, dragging voice of that old bastard to whom he gived all his money because he was good enough to listen to his life story. His was calm, controlled. He articulated each syllable carefully, as if he was talking to someone intellectually limited who was struggling to grasp the meaning of his words.  
Howard briefly turned his head back towards the large black window to his right, only watching their reflection, but guessing Marty and Johnson's presence on the other side.

"Isaac. Right. How old are you?"

This time, his thin lips remained closed, his brown irises watching the inspector's greyish blue eyes. These eyes, and these slightly drooping eyelids... If the voice was not a sufficient clue, he was now completly sure that it was this man who smelled like rainwater, and whose dry skin fingers had touched his neck. Today, he smelled like coffee, and his mid-length, curly, greyish-brown hair, tied on his neck, smelled like cheap shampoo.

"Where were you born?"

There were four crumbs stuck in the long hair of his goatee. It seemed to come from the pastries distributed by the flourishing French bakeries in the city. A small daily gift, or perhaps weekly, to motivate him to face a long working day. A deep sigh went through the inspector's nostrils, shaking the hairs of his mustache as he putted his elbows against the table.

"As you wish. Let's get down to business. Did you know Alastair O'Sullivan?"

He was a little stiff, and he had clenched his fists as his jaw bones had appeared through his skin.

"How did you meet him? When? Why? What was your relationship with him?"

His body temperature was increasing. His voice had become deeper, sharper.

"What were you doing in this house?"

All of this was easily understandable.

"Did you kill that man?"

Anger.  
Howard violently banged on the table with his fist, even failing to startle the young man. Damn it, the way he was staring at him with his little analystic look... He saw his eyes detailing every inch of his face, from the root of his hair to his chin, as if he could guess a whole bunch of information about him in a simple glance. As if, in the end, it was Howard who was being interrogated without his adversary even having to say a word. He knew that Chief Johnson was not going to blame him for slapping him in the face to establish his authority, but a part of him, more or less conscious, refused the idea of disappointing the so irreproachable Marty by using this kind of process. Or to disappoint himself, perhaps.

"It’s your right to remain silent," he finally said, wiping his sweaty palms off his pants, "but your lack of cooperation will not win you the judges' favour."

As he did a movement to stand up, the young man's calm voice echoed for the second time in his ears.

"You don't understand, Inspector Harrison. It's too late."

Howard slowly turned back to him, who was still perfectly seated in his chair, his hands joined on the table and a revolting calm face. This silence that he had just broken had suddenly brought to light a detail that otherwise would not even have reached his consciousness: since he had entered this silent room, Howard could no longer hear anything but his own breathing. One, and only one, breath.

"How do you know my name?," he suddenly asked, without even realizing it.

This time, Isaac's eyelids briefly covered his brown irises, creating a thin barrier between them as if he needed to break their eye contact before the tension increased. But for a short, very short moment, Howard saw his gaze fixed on the black glass next to him, in the exact place - and Howard could have bet his life on it - where Marty was sitting.

"You..."

"Your phone, Inspector."

"What do you mea…"

His eyes left his owns to look at the left pocket of his jacket when a muffled ring tone echoed in the room. A few simple notes looped, patiently waiting for Howard's hand to pick up. As soon as the thin screen was between his fingers and the image of a little boy appeared before his eyes, he saw, from the corner of his eye, Isaac's attention staying for a moment on the photograph. A blond child with a bowl haircut, his smile pierced by a missing baby tooth, had jumped on his father's back. Harrison, about 15 years younger.  
But before he had time to see more, Howard muttered "shit" before rapidly leaving the room, putting his phone to his ear.

 

***

 

It was almost ten o'clock when two shadows had spread over the corridor wall that he could see through the glass of his enclosure. Isaac had opened his eyes as soon as he had heard the first footsteps, but he didn't feel the need to get up from his bench to look at the newcomers. He was simply sitting there, next to the yellowish stain, with his back straight and his hands on his laps, waiting. He didn't really know what he was waiting, but it didn't matter.

"You're gonna end up with your name on this cell, you know?"

Isaac’s lips slightly opened when he hearded that slightly hoarse voice, but he closed them before Inspector Harrison's silhouette entered his field of vision. He had not seen him since the morning, but, with the exception of the police uniform changed for some civilian clothes, he was still easily recognizable by the grey curly hair negligently tied on his neck and by the goatee with a little too long mustache. On the other hand, his light eyes did not even turn to him as he walked down the hall, one hand on the back of a young woman in handcuffs. She, however, wore an unusual outfit: her dark red hair showed two golden rings hanging from the lobes of her ears, at first glance mainly made of tinted steel. Her lips were painted in red, but the lipstick had spread slightly over the bottom of her left cheek, covering the appearance of a small blue hematoma on her skin. On her shoulders, a black leather jacket covered a short dress revealing her thighs, and her bare feet on the cold tile made her jump in discomfort.

"Admit it, Howard, you get bored when I'm not around," she says with a chuckle.

She had an interesting accent, which Isaac did not recognize. At the end of this sentence, the fine features of her face tightened and her front teeth, slightly longer than the rest of them, bitted her lower lip. Pain. Isaac looked down at the hematoma of her jaw while the young woman turned her head towards him, stopping in the middle of the corridor. Her mascara had made small packets on her eyelashes and half-wiped black marks appeared under her dark brown eyes.  
During a few seconds, the young woman simply looked at him with an indiscreet interest, detailing him from head to toe while Howard, behind her, let out an annoyed growl and slightly pushed her.

"Come on, princess, it's getting late, so let me put you to bed," he muttered.

Isaac tilted his head to the right. Strange. His tone was different when he talked to this young woman. His voice had become low, as if he was afraid to hurt her with simple words.

"Wait, wait, wait, who’s this guy? He looks even less dangerous than my neighbor's goldfish, what the hell is he doing here?"

"You shouldn't rely so much on appearances."

With a wave of his hand, he vaguely pointed to the wound on the girl's face, without looking at it. Again. It was like that sweet, protective tone he had: he seemed to fear that she would feel attacked by a simple glance. Isaac raised an eyebrow.

"You should have learned it tonight..."

"That asshole? He wasn't a threat. He was just lucky. If he'd been a little more drunk, I would have managed to get his money and get out of the room before he caught me."

"If you say so, Phoebe. I have no doubt that your clients are charming people and that you get a real kick out of scamming them, but you'd better stop dating these kinds of sick people. Get a real job, you're too young to be out on the streets."

"Okay, and what job do you want me to do?"

Now they had left Isaac's field of vision. Howard took a deep breath, as if a weight had left his stomach as soon as he had freed himself from his heavy observation. This kid made him uncomfortable, sitting like a wax statue on his bench, without even touching the food tray that one of his colleagues had left for him two hours earlier. Shit, he hadn't slept, eaten or even asked to take a piss since he left O'Sullivan's room. Several times during the day, Howard had felt the strange need to stand at the entrance to the corridor leading to the cells, his eyes fixed on the red light illuminating the step of the door of the room where the boy was locked up. He was right there. It was not one of those dumb dreams he sometimes had, and from which he woke up without knowing if he just had a nightmare or not.

"Murder?"

"What?"

Phoebe turned back to him as soon as her wrists were released from their handcuffs, placing her hands on her waist.

"The handsome, so clean guy. Did he kill someone?"

"Yeah. Maybe. That's what Johnson thinks, anyway."

"Don't you?"

Howard felt his throat drying up. Neither Johnson nor Marty had been able to see this tiny detail, this gesture so insignificant that Howard couldn’t stop thinking about it since the moment he had left the interrogation room. This gesture was Isaac’s eyes. He had hesitated between answering or remaining silent. It only happened when he asked his last question.  
How do you know my name?  
He had blinked. He had fled away from his gaze. It was the first time. The only one.

"I don’t."

His hand landed on the cell glass and immediately the transparent door closed in front of Phoebe's nose, who barely had time to open her mouth before the perfect insulation smothered the words she said. Annoyed, the young girl kicked the air before going to sit on the floor, disgusted by the simple idea of approaching the sticky bench. Anyway, she knew that screaming wouldn’t do anything, since no one could hear her: after her countless police custody, she understood that there was nothing more to do than wait until the early morning.  
Howard smiled at her before going away, slowly walking down the corridor. The sound of his footsteps echoed on the bare walls, the one and only noise, now, to break the silence. He had already been off duty for at least an hour and his colleagues working at night were still sitted in the cafeteria, staring at the television screen, enjoying the last episode of their favorite serie before going to sleep in front of the computer of their office. First to arrive, last to leave, Harrison thought, shrugging his shoulders. ‘The man who immersed himself in work until he forgot to live’ was the epitaph that would be written on his grave. Just the fact that he knew Phoebe Paige, that 20-year-old girl who had the gift of getting into the worst problems she could find, better than his own son Sean said a lot. And vice versa, by the way. This girl had guessed his thoughts in the blink of an eye.  
His feet stopped walking. Damn it.  
Slowly, he turned back in front of the large window framed by red lights overlooking one of those white cubes smelling of urine and vomit. The boy, sitted on the bench at the back of the room, was already staring at him, squinting as if he was completely caught up in this observation that he was doing as soon as someone entered his field of vision.

You don't understand, Detective Harrison.

There was something, something he had missed. There was something more than this elegant beauty still intact after twenty hours of police custody. Not a minute of sleep and no dark bags under his brown eyes. Not a shower, and not a slight smell of sweat on his body and clothes. Not a single glance at this food tray on the floor of the cell, not a single complaint about the exhausting lack of comfort.  
He was just... there. Waiting. Waiting for what?

It's too late.

Slowly, as if he was afraid to scare him away, Isaac got up from his bench and walked a few steps toward the window. He stopped, keeping exactly the same distance between the transparent facade and his body as Howard on the other side. With his eyes looking straight in his own, his lips closed, he then began to copy like a mirror the inspector's smallest movements: his index finger unconsciously tapping the top of his thigh, his frowned eyebrows as if it was trying to hold his thoughts behind his forehead. But when Isaac, once again, tilted his head to the right, it was Howard who instinctively accompanied his gesture.

"What were you trying to tell me?" he whispered.

He knew that no sound could pass through that window and that this kid had seen his lips move without grasping the meaning of his silent words. That was what he had felt during those long minutes with him in the interrogation room. Talking to a wall.  
Isaac blinked slowly. Howard, on the other hand, looked at the exit of the corridor, making sure no one was watching him. There was nothing but his consciousness weighing on his stomach and squeezing his throat. And then, before he even noticed it himself, his hand slapped the transparent door of the cell and the red lights turned green when the glass separating him from Isaac slid to the right.

"Fuck it."

Howard stepped back, never breaking his eye contact with the boy. No surprise had distorted his features. In fact, no emotion had ever seemed to take possession of his face since Howard first laid eyes on him.

"What the hell am I doing?," he muttered for himself, looking down at his hand.

Isaac stood there, without saying a word. Maybe he knew the answer, maybe he understood that Howard would be unable to sleep at night knowing this kid, who was only slightly older than his own son, was still within these four walls, when he was intimately convinced - without being able to tell what had given him such a conviction - that he was not the one who had murdered O'Sullivan. In fact, no piece of the puzzle seemed to make any sense.

"What the fuck are you waiting for?! Get out of there!"

Isaac immediately took two quick steps forward, looking at the door of the cell when it closed behind him.  
No. Howard could not leave him with the Chief Johnson, he could not sentence him to prison without understanding who this boy was, without having proof of his guilt in this affair. For him and his unbearable way of staring at every single person he met, it would be a death sentence. If he spent a single night locked up with other detainees, he would be disemboweled before daybreak.

"What the hell are you still doing here, standing in front of me like a pole? Go home before someone finds you here!"

Isaac frowned gently at this last sentence. For a single second, his eyes detached from Howard to get lost in the void and his lips opened without any sound coming out. Was it... confusion?

"What? Don't you know how to get home?"

"It's not that."

Howard was startled by his soft, calm voice. He no longer even expected to receive any answer to anything he was saying to this kid.

"I... I'm sorry, but I don't understand where I have to "go home"."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your order, Inspector. I don't understand what you want me to do. I don't have a place to go home."

Howard felt a burn in his throat. Without even realizing it, his eyes briefly left Isaac's face to rest on the window of the cell where he had just locked Phoebe Paige. This 20-year-old girl, curled up against the cold wall of this empty room, with a taste of blood in her mouth and her bare feet on the icy floor... If her mother knew what life her daughter had in the United States, far from her dreams of being a Hollywood star or a Silicon Valley icon, she would be able to come here, find her and bring her back to New Zealand. But Phoebe couldn’t even think about it. No matter how much she struggled to pay her ridiculously high rent for a broom closet. No matter how many times she had seen her dreams crushed before her eyes. She had nowhere to go back to, since her "home" seemed to be an open-air prison to her.  
And Sean... Howard closed his eyes. Sean... He probably said that before. "I have no place to go back to."  
A sigh left his lips as he looked back at Isaac's face, who had freed himself from his veil of confusion to regain his eternal indifference.

"Get out of here without anyone seeing you and wait for me outside the police station. Do you understand this ‘order’?"

Isaac straightened his head before agreeing slowly. Without a word, he walked down the corridor, leaving Howard in front of his enclosure. That order, yes, it seemed clear to him like water. But there was indeed a detail, such as an incoherent parameter that detached from this command and twinkled in his mind, something that he could not analyze.  
When Inspector Harrison said these words, the tone of his voice had softened in the same way as when he was talking to Phoebe.


	3. Decadence

February 6, 2054 - 12:03 a.m.  
Fell Street, San Francisco, California  
45°F, precipitation 18%, humidity 87%, wind 5mph.

 

Howard's fingers had started to play with the sleeves of his jacket as the car raced down the steep streets of the city. They could only hear the discreet noise of drones carrying small packages that passed over the vehicle before rising to a building. From the corner of his eye, Howard could see Isaac tilting his head toward the window to detail the huge holographic posters projected between two buildings, the advertising slogans floating on the dark sky, the cameras on each corner of every building, and sometimes even attached to passers-by. There was light everywhere, as if the slightest area of shadow represented an unspeakable danger to them: projectors, garlands of light, everything good enough to illuminate the slightest brick, the slightest palm tree, the slightest plastic bag fluttering on the road before a metal clip closed on it.  
Isaac straightened his back, looking at the long twisted arm, without any articulation or trace of skin on it, and the translucent glass bulb that was on top of them. Through this rounded head, an orange glow watched the side of the road like a lighthouse, then turned green when his clip hand putted the plastic bag into his chest box stuck between the two long arms descending to his ankles. A young couple passed next to it, and, immersed into their discussion, they threw their soda cans on the robot’s round head. As they kept walking along the road, the robot with long twisted arms stopped and the glow of his projector turned orange again as he slowly picked up the cans, puting them one by one inside his chest.  
Isaac rested his back against the comfortable seat of the vehicle, realizing that he had twisted up his neck to watch the scene while the car moved peacefully, stuck between its multicolored sisters. When he finally looked back at Inspector Harrison, Howard seemed a bit tense, frowning as he watched the sidewalks.

"I can’t help it, these things freak me out," he muttered with a shoulder movement.

Isaac slowly tilted his head, but Howard simply pointed out the surroundings of the boulevard when the car rode along the rails of the old San Francisco cablecars. There was only one short line left now, but it had to be believed that this primitive attraction still appealed to tourists. A journey back in time. Following Howard's cold gaze, Isaac turned his head back towards the window, guessing the shape of a good ten machines wandering among humans enjoying urban nightlife. One of them, candy pink, looked like a huge glittery doughnut and was dancing at the entrance of a shop, singing a repetitive song praising the explosion of flavours of their pastries; another, quite different, navy blue and a grey star painted on his chest, stood in front of an ageless man slumped against the gate of a parking lot, his eyes lost in the void and a needle stuck in his arm, before printing a fine and placing it on his belly.

"Those weird robots right there. The others are rather practical, but these ones are..."

Isaac finally laid his eyes on a woman, standing up at the edge of the sidewalk, her arms clenched against her chest and her little gilded handbag stuck between her fingers. She was looking suspiciously at every stranger who walked a little too close as if letting them approach less than six feet away from her would immediately lower the value of her rich clothes. When a taxi, a small yellow car with no driver's seat, stopped in front of her, Isaac heard her sigh of relief before she rushed inside. Behind her, a man... no, not a man - a robot in human form, wearing a red and black uniform decorated with a real estate company logo waited for the taxi to leave before returning to the entrance of a building, protecting access to the offices. The perfect shape of its body couldn’t do anything about it: the transparent bald skull, his ears without lobes, his nose without nostrils, his fingers without nails made it impossible to confuse him with a human being, even if someone deigned to dye the metal alloy that covered his body with a shade closer to the skin. His iris of a bright yellow and without pupils, crossed Isaac's eyes through the tinted window of the car.

"Why the hell are these crazy engineers trying to make them look humans?," sighed Howard as they turned into an adjacent street. "We already have enough to do with living people, no need to add conscious toasters in our lives."

Isaac slowly turned his head around, looking straight ahead and joining his hands between his thighs.

"There is no need to fear them," he said in a neutral tone. "They can't hurt humans."

"That's the kind of crap that people keep telling us all the time, but, hey, you can see how it goes in novels or science fiction movies. It's never a good idea to create something smarter than yourself."

Isaac looked down at his hands when he felt a strange sensation on his skin. He had stuck his nails in his palms with such force that his phalanges had turned white. Frowning, he slowly raised his hands to his eyes, inspecting the small marks he had left on it.

"You must think that the moral lessons of a cop who has just released a suspect in a murder case mustn't be worth much," Howard continued, finally turning around and staring for a few seconds at Isaac's indifferent face before he sighed deeply. "Shit, it would really be easier for both of us if you could just prove that you had nothing to do with it. An alibi, a witness, anything that could h…"

His voice was unable to finish his sentence, interrupted by a loud noise of broken glass; immediatly, Howard and Isaac turned their heads back towards the parking lot bordering the City Hall, just quickly enough to see a cleaning robot, completely identical to the one they had seen a few minutes earlier, collapse on the floor. His round head had burst under impact, scattering glass fragments on the roadway and uncovering the small flashing projector. Some laughs resounded around the body before a visibly drunk man, with a marked face and patched clothes, began to beat the machine under the amused, mocking or contemptuous gaze of passers-by. The man was screaming, but his words were not clear enough for Isaac to grasp the meaning. His victim, inert, had stopped illuminating the pavement with a red glow.

"What a moron," Howard muttered as the car turned around the huge Civic Center building. "I'd fine him for destroying public property, but... he wouldn't be able to pay it anyway."

Howard sighed resignedly while Isaac looked down. That's what these machines were, basically. Public property. Walking trash cans, employees who couldn't be tired or doormen who couldn't do mistakes; tthey were garbage collectors to whom nobody would have to pay a wage, police officers on patrol who, unlike their human counterparts, would never get any kind of feeling when facing poverty. And if one of them were used as a release for an anger that his mere presence seemed to have caused, well, so be it: it was one more piece of steel at the dump, and another one would take its place. A brand new employee that would end up the same way as the previous one. Anyway, it’s not like they could defend themselves.

"I...," he said before a short silence fell on the car, his mouth ajar as if the words refused to leave his throat.

Howard turned his eyes on him. Isaac’s eyelids closed for a moment on his brown irises, and he gently frowned before his voice agreed to form words. The sound of this glass skull exploding on the floor kept repeating itself in his head, as if the echo had got stuck in the hollow of his eardrum. On the other hand, all he had to do was look at Howard’s pinched lips to feel a bit of a strange trust inside himself.

"I think there is a way to prove my innocence in this case, but... I can't decide if it's a good idea to tell you about it."

For a short while, Isaac saw Howard's face distort as if his whole being were suddenly waging an infernal war against all the emotions that had just exploded in his heart to decide which one would take over. The surprise, obviously, was quickly crushed by the anger and he suddenly raised his hands, claws ready to tighten on the boy's throat, but it suffocated under the intense relief and his strong impatience.

"What do you mean?! Of course you should tell me about it! If it can save you from ending up in jail for a crime you didn't commit, you better talk while you still can!"

Isaac stared at him for long seconds, always so quiet, sitted with his back straight and his hands on his lap. And then, as his lips finally opened, he suddenly saw Howard's blue eyes leave his own and slide somewhere behind him, as they passed by the large square surrounded by wide stretches of grass facing the doors of the City Hall.

"Damn it... What a little prick!"

Isaac, a puzzled look on his face, tried to say something before Howard's hand suddenly hitted a button on the car's dashboard; a cuss escaped his lips as the vehicle's steering wheel appeared in front of him and a series of gauges and small screens lit up before his eyes.

"Manual driving mode activated," said a female voice through the speakers. "Please put on your seat belts..."

"No time for this bullshit," Howard said as he turned the wheel.

Isaac felt his shoulder violently bumping into the door when the vehicle turned on itself, causing the tires to squeal on the road. In a perfectly organized ballet, the other cars on the avenue immediately changed their itinerary, forming a large loop around their dissident colleague as its wheels passed over the sidewalk before making a sudden stop. Isaac threw his hands on the dashboard, just in time to avoid crashing his nose on it, but he didn't even have time to say a word before Howard jumped out of the vehicle.  
As the young man returned to his original position on his seat, arranging his wrinkled clothes, he leaned forward as slightly as possible, observing the scene through the wide open door next to him. In the middle of the square, kneeling on the ground with their hands behind their backs like prisoners ready to be shot, about fifteen young men and women wore a white top with the same slogan written on it.

"Your progress is our decadence," read Isaac aloud.

Most passers-by watched them with a dazed look, others pretended not to see anything by looking at their mobile phones, while others stopped to take pictures of them with a contemptuous grin on their lips. All this, however, did not seem to touch them: they all kept their eyes fixed on the City Hall, and they only broke their position when a cry of protest suddenly resounded in their ranks. Howard had quickly walked through the small group and his hand had closed on one of the young boys' arms, dragging him without any softness. While struggling like a trapped animal, the boy yelled at him to let him go, kicking the air and trying to grasp anything around him.

"Let him go!"

"This is censorship!"

Isaac straightened his head as he heard the students rushing after Howard and the boy, chasing them until they reached the car, shouting, covering each other's voices. Howard stopped for a moment as the rear door opened, holding the young man's forearms firmly against him. Another boy had advanced, detaching himself from the group, his blond hair shaved on one side of his head and a colored wick of electric blue falling to his left temple. Judging by the force with which Howard had tightened his grip on his prisoner's arms, this was not the first time they saw each-other, maybe not even the first time they found themselves in this situation.

"If Sean wants to participate in this peaceable demonstration, you have no right to stop him, Mr. Harrison. Even if it pisses off the cops that a few people still dare to denounce the power you helped to put in place, this is our freedom of expression!"

"I don't give a shit about your damn claims," Howard said. "You’ve got your freedom of expression, and I’ve got my freedom to kick my son's ass if I want to."

He threw the boy into the back seat and, as he quickly walked around the vehicle under the angry shouts and insults of the revolted little group, Isaac wisely looked away, his lips pinched. With Howard's hands on the wheel, the car furiously overtook her sisters, forcing them to step aside. At that moment, Isaac finally took the risk of looking up at the rearview mirror.  
Of course, he was able to hear the boy's rushed breathing, and even his heartbeat still slightly faster than normal, but to see his chest rising under his white top and his jaw bones appearing through his pale skin made the boiling anger he was feeling even more clear. The beginning of a beard surrounded his lips and covered his chin, while his thick, almost black hair - a color, Isaac thought - too tangled to curl like his father's, fell back on his forehead, mingled with a good layer of dust. But before he had time to look at him in more detail, his light blue eyes, in every way similar to Howard's, suddenly rose to the rearview mirror, looking straight into his own.  
Isaac knew full well that the boy - Sean, from what he had heard from his father's conversation - expected him to look away, that he probably expected him to be intimidated by the icy and almost threatening look he gave him, but he did nothing about it. In fact, now that Sean had decided to lift his slightly pointed nose towards him, he had much less trouble to recognize, still timidly present on his young adult features, the little blond boy he had seen on Howard's cell phone screen. Sean Harrison. Isaac let his pupils run through his face before he looked at his clear eyes again. He could try to look as threatening as he wanted, it was nothing compared to the the Chief Johnson’s snake eyes when he was watching him through the window of his cell.  
But, suddenly breaking his cold mask, the corner of his lip suddenly curved, digging his cheek in a half smile, as if he hadn't managed to repress it entirely. A smile. Isaac felt his mouth open. He had expected annoyance, anger, perhaps exasperation, but certainly not a smile.

"Who's that, your new doggie?"

Howard, focused on the road, was brutally pulled out of his thoughts by his son's voice and, when he looked at Isaac, seated beside him, he seemed to take a few seconds to remember the events of the past few hours.

"It's more complicated than that," he sighed.

Sean, in the back, had an exaggerated head movement, distorting the features of his face as if his father's words alone had answered all the questions he could have asked. More complicated than that... Yes, it certainly was. Isaac took his eyes off the rearview mirror and looked at Howard. Without a word, the inspector winked at him, as if to seal the secret of the whole story that united them. Then, taking advantage of Sean's silence, he turned back to the road, while Isaac, beside him, tried as best as he could to copy this strange gesture he had just made. Blinking with only one eye. He didn't quite understand the meaning of this curious thing, but if Howard did, then it was probably wise for him to learn it.

 

***

 

The door opened up, hitting the corridor wall, shaking the frames attached to it. Isaac took a few steps forward, listening to his weight making the floor slats squeak while his eyes detailed the photographs one by one. This little blond boy appeared to him again, first as a chubby baby, then as a happy child, sitting in the middle of the frame, his father leaning over his right shoulder. The entire left side of the photograph, on the other hand, had been torn without any care. Isaac slowly turned his head back towards Howard, who was negligently throwing his jacket on the back of a kitchen chair, but before he had time to say a word, a violent shock hit his shoulder, throwing him against the wall. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sean's indifferent look as he rushed towards the narrow stairs leading to the first floor. He probably pushed him voluntarily, but Isaac did not give him the pleasure of making the slightest sound of pain or protest. Never mind.  
As he climbed up the first steps, a whistle left Howard's lips while he sat at the kitchen table. Sean, immobilized on the fourth step of the stairs, turned around and rolled his eyes with a deep sigh. He descended and dragged himself with an excessively weary pace to his father, who simply pointed to the chair facing him before patiently joining his hands on the table. Isaac frowned slightly, feeling a hint of misunderstanding sprouting in his mind.  
An interrogation? In any case, this scene was strangely similar to the one that took place at the police station, when Isaac himself was sitting in front of Inspector Harrison, separated by a simple table. Until now, he had not known that humans were doing the same exercise with their own offspring.  
Seeing Howard's blue eyes watching him, he took a few steps on the kitchen tiles, stopping beside the table so that he could stand exactly between the two men, his hands behind his back. All right: if the inspector wanted him to be present during the interrogation, he should be an observer. He wasn't camouflaged by a one-way glass, but the angry look Sean gave him was not very threatening to him anyway.

"Alright...," Howard breathed, resting his back against his chair, his eyes on his fingers while he thought about his own words. "Look, Seanie, I know I've already asked you for a lot these past few years, but...."

Isaac saw Sean roll his eyes again, and the boy slowly began to shake his head. To be honest, he could not really understand whether it was his father's words that exasperated him so much, or the simple use of the nickname ‘Seanie’.

"... but Isaac has, shall we say, some problems," Howard continued with a brief movement in his direction, "and I decided that it would be wiser for him to spend the night here before finding him another shelter tomorrow."

Isaac took his eyes off Sean and, without moving his head, stared at Harrison as he heard him block his breath. His body temperature had risen when he uttered these words at full speed, as if he had rushed to tear off a bandage to get the pain through faster. But a little sneer, so slight that he doubted for a moment that he had really perceived it, pushed him to turn away from Howard again.  
Sean had a little smile on the corner of his lips. A smile without joy, however. Just a forced contraction of the muscles of his jaw. His clear eyes, on the other hand, were not even trying to smother the icy rage that already seemed to be exploding deep within his insides.

"What's his problem, the stick up his ass?"

Isaac tilted his head at these words. What stick? Before he formulated his question, he saw the inspector waving his hand to tell him to ignore this provocation, but Sean simply straight up on his seat, leaning against the edge of the table.  
Sharp as two blades, his eyes passed from Howard to Isaac's impermeable face, who watched him without even letting the slightest blink move his eyelids. Faced with this reaction - or this lack of reaction, the grin that stretched his lips only spread further.

"Come on, tell me, what's your problem? Huh?"

Isaac felt Howard tensing up, but he refused to leave Sean's pupils. His voice had become sweet, almost honeyed.

"Are you a maniac? A psychopath?"

There was a hint of amusement in his words, and Isaac was firmly convinced that, this time, even the inspector had been able to perceive it. With a detached gesture, his finger had slipped between his lips, and his teeth had begun to bit the tip of his nail.

"Or are you just one of those losers my father thinks he can save?"

"Sean!"

His eyes briefly detached from Isaac's when his father stood up so suddenly that his chair fell over on the floor. Sean slowly got up too, but instead of rushing to his room, he stopped by Isaac's side, his eyes looking straight into his own.  
They were no longer threatening now, nor even charged with the electricity born of his insolence and the pleasure he seemed to feel from seeing his father losing his temper. He no longer had that frosty grin on his lips, only a light, almost imperceptible smile. Perhaps if he didn't stand so close to him that he could feel his warm breath against his skin, Isaac himself might have failed to discern it.  
Sean passed the tip of his tongue between his dry lips, just enough to moisten them. No matter what he said, what he did, or even how he looked at him, Isaac's face was never answering him at all, as if it was perfectly impermeable to any kind of emotions. Of course, he had felt his heavy observation throughout their little car trip, he had seen the way he had been staring at him until he pushed him against the corridor wall, but he couldn't grasp any of his thoughts. Nothing was visible on his brown eyes. All he had was this strange habit of slightly squinting his eyelids and frowning. And that was it.

"You're right, Dad."

Isaac felt his breath against his lips before he walked by him, bumping into his shoulder.

"You've already asked me too much," he concluded as he left the room, leaving only the sound of his soles in the staircase to break the silence that fell on the kitchen.


End file.
